I am Woman - Cunt

 

What do you think of when I say "Vagina?"

Oh, right.

A vagina.

Let me rephrase.

What do you feel when I say "Vagina?"

It's an interesting word, isn't it?  Well, perhaps not the word itself, but our reaction to it.

How about "Cunt?"

There's a word that makes you feel all sorts of things, right?

Why, in the Western world, is naming a woman's sexual organs so taboo, so funny, so shameful?

I mean, we all have them, right?

Sometimes I get sick of the shame that society has pinned on the very essence of womanhood.  

I get mad that there is no word for a penis or testicles that is considered as rude as Cunt.  

A few years ago, I went to see the Vagina Monologues in London.  The actresses told us we had to reclaim the word Cunt.  Make it positive.  Make it happy.  Make it beautiful.  They had the audience yell the word again and again and again.

While I was yelling CUNT!  CUNT!  CUNT!  CUNT!  I began to wonder if this exercise would make any difference.  Men around me (the few that were there) were squirming a little, and had lopsided grins on their faces.  Even some of the women were snickering.  I am not sure they were reclaiming the word so much as enjoying the guilty pleasure of yelling it out - like a naughty child.

Ever since then, when someone in my presence uses the word, I counter with:

 "Hey!  A cunt is one of the most beautiful things in the world!"

It usually shuts them up - except, of course, if I'm with my gay friends, who tend to collapse in heaps of sarcastic laughter.

I also try to use swearwords that demean male genitalia, in a one-woman attempt to even the odds.  But they all sounds so... well, facile.  Even flaccid.  

"Dick!"

"Prick!"

"Balls!"

Pathetic.  

The only word that comes close is "BOLLOCKS!"  But it has the added dimension of being foreign in the US - it's peppered, therefore, with an exotic, humorous quality which, again, lowers the impact.

And so I live with the fact that even swearwords reinforce our society's pervasive gender inequality.

But I did discover one good thing through my contemplation of the female reproductive form... 

I saw a documentary on the BBC once, about "Ladies' parts," as some would say in the UK.

For once, I got to see vaginas close up.  All sorts of vaginas.  Large ones, small ones.  Firm ones, soft ones.  

Vaginal lips, I discovered, are as varied as facial lips.  Some are small and firm, while others hang, draping like curtains protecting a wonder behind them.

Of course I ran to get a hand mirror and take a look at mine.  I think it's a strange and empowering thing the first time a woman actually looks at herself "down there."  It wasn't the first time I'd done it, but it was the first time I had something to compare to.

And that is how I came to scare the living crap out of my husband as he came home from work.  He walked in the front door to find me standing at the top of the staircase, naked from the waist down, holding my labia spread apart, excitedly squealing:

"I have a pretty vagina!"

To his credit, and keeping in mind that he did not have any context to frame this behavior, he immediately agreed.

My husband is a really great cunt.

To read more of the I am Woman series, click here.

Comments

[Everywhereventually]

We were talking about 'drumroll' THE C WORD down the pub after work the other week. One of our colleagues was due to leave and we were joking that the use of the word was going to dramatically reduce once he left. He used it all the time as a term of abuse in the same way others might call someone else an idiot. We all agreed (men and women) that we all used the word a lot more when he was around than before. He was a total misogynist in the way of being one of those matey blokes who seems charming while actually being a total knob.

The English teachers (all soft spoken English roses who you could easily imagine inspiring students with Forster under a willow tree) then went on to explain why cunt is such a successful swear word. Apparently it is simply the hardest shortest word in the Anglo-Saxon lexicon. K N T. The hardest letters, forced together into a hard forceful word at it's most effective when said violently.

[Ittybittycrazy]

Fascinating! But, by that logic, why isn't TANK a swearword? ANKT? Damn, neither work as well as Cunt.